Nice long weekend

Spent much of the weekend proper hanging out with Twig. (Including watching James Cagney in The Public Enemy on, what, Friday night I think? Maybe?) Sunday afternoon, went to see Karen K, who was briefly in town; we went up to SF for dinner with Krista and John at Range, one of those upscale California-cuisiney kinds of places.

I'm not normally thrilled with that kind of thing, and they've got a pretty small menu without much vegetarian stuff on it. But the appetizers looked good, so I made a meal of them. The waiter said they were small, so I ordered three--soup, salad, and pasta--but they were fairly substantial; a good meal. And they were all quite tasty. Not a place I would go often, especially because I wasn't nearly hip or stylish enough to be there (my attempt at a semi-dressed-up look was definitely underdressed), but it was good food and good conversation.

Spent the rest of Sunday night and much of the day Monday reading Veronica Mars transcripts (only I was reading those same transcripts on a different site; I wish I had found this site, which is much nicer). I know, I know, I decided to stop watching the series, but I got curious about what happened in season 2, and I went looking for a detailed plot summary, and came across the transcripts, and couldn't resist. It only took about half as long to read (and sometimes skim) a transcript as to watch an episode, and I still got to enjoy most of the good jokes. I realize that the transcripts aren't meant to be a substitute for watching the show, so I felt a little guilty about that, but not guilty enough to not read them. If I had discovered the detailed episode summaries at Mars Investigations, I probably would've read those instead, but I'm not sure that would've saved me much time, and I would've missed the jokes. Anyway, I went through the transcripts for season 2, and ended up just as glad that I hadn't taken the time to watch the episodes; as various people said, some good stuff there, but overall not as good as season 1.

Monday I had lunch with Jay and Holly at a little grill/deli place a couple blocks from my place. Good to see them as always. I'll be seeing them again in a few days when we go to see our cousins in the East Bay.

Somewhere in there, I did some editing, and started thinking about magazine stuff again after a week or two of mostly avoiding thinking about it. I've only got a week left to finish all the infrastructure cleanup/fixes I wanted to do before we reopen; not sure I'm going to make it. :( But I'll try.

Oh, and I went grocery shopping, and read some James Patrick Kelly stories, and probably did some other stuff I'm not remembering. Completely failed to send substantive email to any of the multitude of people to whom I owe it; also failed to catch up on reading other people's journals. Apologies to all. Did get a couple of my own journal entries written, though (the two before this one), and started posting to Neology again. I'd like to figure out a way to do a combo journal that'll have entries from all the places I post, but haven't sat down to figure out how to do that yet and probably won't for a while.

Today, spent much of the day (a) playing Wii games and (b) skimming VM season-3 episode summaries (didn't even bother with the detailed descriptions for that season). Then spent the evening having dinner with the Evanses, which was nice as always; came home around 8:30 and spent an hour or so playing Dance Dance Revolution. More on that anon.

And now I'm a little headachey and pretty tired, so I'll end this entry and go try to get a little magazine stuff done before I fall asleep. Or maybe I'll get started on my end-of-year donations.

Hope those of you who celebrate a holiday this time of year (which this year, in the US, probably means Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, New Year's, and/or secular equivalents, as Hanukkah ended two weeks ago and Ramadan ended over two months ago) have enjoyed doing so. I always get a little sad when friends tell me that they've spent the last week of the year being stressed and unhappy and fighting with their families; I think a lot of people do a lot of things this time of year out of a sense of obligation rather than enjoyment, and though I know that obligations (especially familial ones) are not easily avoided, I do often wish that there was less of that kind of thing this time of year and more relaxed enjoying the company of loved ones. I know this isn't feasible for a lot of families, but fwiw, for those families that can do it, I recommend trying to reduce the number of things that are only being done out of a sense of guilt, obligation, or duty, and increase the number of things that are being done out of a sense of joy, love, or pleasure. (Not that that first set of categories is mutually exclusive with the second set, of course; there are plenty of things that people do out of both guilt and love, for example. But still.)

And for those of you who don't celebrate a holiday this time of year, I hope that you've at least gotten some time off work, and/or gotten overtime, comp time, praise, or other value out of working when others aren't.

One Response to “Nice long weekend”

  1. Twig

    Friday night was the solstice. Saturday was the movie with D. And after watching it, I am utterly undecided as to whether or not I want to watch more Cagney movies, or not.

    reply

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